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the present investigation, presenting to us a strong illustration of this. The final catastrophe not built upon an idle tale, but taken from the history given to posterity by Saxo-Grammaticus, awakens every sentiment essential to the design of the tragic musė; and, guided by no established rules, the poet has truly, as it were, "held the mirror up to nature. If our feelings are plunged into distress, by witnessing innocence and virtue, the victim of pride and ambition, we however meet with a train of thought and action common to humanity, and are impressively taught a great moral lesson, by viewing in their full extent the calamities of vice; for like the fearful display of guilty passion evinced in the magnificent tragedy of Macbeth, the pen of the immortal poet has, in Hamlet, given a masterly delineation of the agony of remorse, in the picture so admirably drawn of the tyrant and usurper Claudius, King of Denmark. Notwithstanding the defects which some authors have alluded to, every passage, nay, almost every line, denote this beautiful drama to be the emanation of a vast and comprehensive mind. The just and natural sentiment which it displays,-the pathos of feeling, in contrast with the energy of thought,—the deep and profound observation, regarding the moral and physical condition of man, with the sublimity of reflection which everywhere pervade its pages, will ever call forth the admiration of that portion of mankind susceptible of the higher beauties of poetry, or capable of appreciating the more lofty and elevated speculations of philosophy; 'tis the noblest effusion of Shakspere's genius, and he who can peruse it without experiencing the deepest emotions of the soul, has never known those moments of enjoyment, that bring to the mind a source of pleasure, more sweet and intellectual than all the blandishments which the luxury of wealth, or the vulgar ambition of reckless power have ever been able to bestow.

It is in this drama that Shakspere is the moraliser, and where he moralises on his own feelings and experience," it has a prophetic truth above all history.' We apply it to ourselves, because we know and feel it to be applicable, for as Hazlitt has

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finely observed, "Whoever has become thoughtful and melancholy, through his own mishaps, or those of others; whoever has borne about with him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought himself too much i'the sun;' whoever has seen the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists rising in his own breast, and could find in the world before him only a dull blank with nothing left remarkable in it; whoever has known the pangs of despised love, the insolence of office, or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes;' he who has felt his mind sink within him, and sadness cling to his heart like a malady; who has had his hopes blighted, and his youth staggered by the apparition of strange things; who cannot be well at ease while he sees evil hovering near him like a spectre, whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite and himself nothing, whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences, and who goes to a play as his best resource to shove off, to a second remove, the evils of life by a mock-representation of them--this is the true Hamlet."

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NOTES.

NOTES.

NOTE 1, PAGE 4.

Besides those dramas mentioned in the text;-Love's Labour Lost; The Winter's Tale, and even The Two Gentlemen of Verona, are by some authors called in question; the last by Dr. Johnson, and the two former by Pope. Such was the confusion which formerly prevailed regarding the works of Shakspere, that a great number of those plays produced at the Globe, the Hope, the Red Bull, and other theatres where he performed, were considered as the production of his pen; but having none of those distinguishing marks which characterize the poet's style, they were ultimately rejected; among which Locrine, Sir John Oldcastle, Yorkshire Tragedy, Lord Cromwell, The Puritan, and London Prodigal may be named. Some of the historical plays that are now ranked amongst his works, such as the three parts of Henry VI., have however, been looked upon by Theobald, Warburton, and Malone, as entirely spurious.

Theobald's objection to their authencity rests solely upon some obsolete expressions; whilst Warburton and Malone think that they want spirit and effect in the composition ;—the investigations of Theobald do not indicate much acumen; for we find in those dramas that have never been questioned, the same obsolete expressions which excited his attention when criticising the three parts of Henry VI.

As to Warburton, who became Bishop of Gloucester at the beginning of George the Third's reign, to be aware that many of his observations are unworthy of much confidence, it is only necessary to peruse "The Canons of Criticism," by Mr. Edwards, of the Inner Temple, a work highly interesting to the lovers of Shaksperian lore, and which was published in 1752; indeed, a learned writer of the present day, when alluding to Warburton as a commentator, says "his mind delighted in antitheses, paradoxes, difficulties and contradictions; his edition

of Shakspere was a perfect failure; his studies did not qualify him for the task, and he was perpetually striving to put farfetched ingenuous constructions on the great poet's passages, which were unfounded, and which by no means enhanced the beauties of the author." Many of Malone's remarks are equally futile, the editor of the Pictorial Shakspere very justly observing, "that he has left many important points untouched, and has dwelt somewhat too much upon minute distinctions." To be impressed with some idea how far Malone was guided by the cacoethes scribendi, we may only advert to the circumstance of his writing more than 400 folio pages to prove that the play of Vortigern, written by William Henry Ireland, at the early age of eighteen, was a forgery. Vortigern astonished the literary world; the most learned men hailed it as the production of Shakspere's genius; but doubts arising regarding its authenticity, young Ireland ultimately admitted the forgery, and afterwards published his "Confessions," which, however, did not secure him from a persecution that reflects little honour upon the literati of that day. Malone, from being one of the most ardent admirers of this supposed drama of Shakspere became the bitter opponent of the author of Vortigern.

In alluding to this subject, the writer of these pages does so with no small degree of interest, having at an early age read much concerning the Ireland papers, never imagining he would in future years become known to an individual whose genius, connected with that of Shakspere's for a considerable period, agitated the literary world;-he attended William Henry Ireland during the illness which consigned him to that "bourne from whence no traveller returns," and had every opportunity of knowing that his life had been embittered by the effects of a persecution insidiously maintained, for that which in its worst feature amounted to nothing more than the mere indiscretion of youthful folly. The fate of poor Chatterton naturally awakened the sympathy of Ireland, and shortly before his death he wrote a piece founded upon the story of this neglected and unfortunate youth; but its merit excited no attention: It was presented to the late Mr. Morris of the Haymarket, and rejected, buffoonery on the stage engrossing at that time altogether the popular taste.

NOTE 2, PAGE 4.

In his preliminary remarks to the play of Hamlet, Mr. S. W. Singer observes," that we may safely place the date of its

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